a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Bits from Randy Rigby Interview, 2/20

On the Jazz selling hope
What we are trying to is build is a hope for our fan base and for this community, that we have something that they’re really proud of, that represents this community, short-term and long-term, that it has a hope of really a playing and competing, and giving us something that night in and night out, the people are saying, “Hey, that was a great worth my, our value of coming out and putting our hard-earned money and coming out and seeing the game,” and/or watching it on television.

And also the hope of that, you know what, that they can keep progressing and improving and working towards seeing if we can also compete for an NBA championship…

I know Kevin [O’Connor], and Dennis [Lindsey], and myself, Bob Hyde’s heavily involved. I just left, in fact, some meetings with them, and they are just grueling over all of the discussions and potential players that they’ve had people talking about, and they’re really, we’re analyzing everything and just saying, “You know what? Is this gonna make us better?”

‘Cause that’s what we want. We want our fans to know that, hey, there’s a hope that this team is continuing to improve and get better.

Do you think there are future stars on this team?.
I do…

You know, it’s, there’s, there are, you know, as you talk also, with Dennis and Kevin, and there’s different strategies and different ways, and the degrees of what those stars can maybe mean, are also you have to look at that in total perspective as well. Detroit was very successful a number of years ago of not having just that, you know, franchise-type of star, but multiple kind of mid-brightness stars, let’s call it.

And you know what, and had a number of them that made a very good balancing team. I think we have right now on our team as well some very good players that are blending together that are stars. They’re some of them I think will be even bigger and brighter stars in the future for the NBA.

I’m watching some of the things that Gordon Hayward is doing, that Derrick Favors is doing, you know what, even to a certain degree, Alec Burks and Enes Kanter has really shown some glimpses of having, being very solid, respected players.

You know, now the question is to the degree of what that will mean in stardom. It’s still I think too early to identify, but I think there’s some real potential. I think you see talent potential in these players that they are going to be I think something that’s going to be ver–that we’re going to be very proud of and have a lot of potential.

And so I think there are some of those that we have on our team. We have some veteran players that have been extremely close and very solid. Al Jefferson and, you know, Paul Millsap have been yeomen in some of the work that they have done this year for us.

On the excellent job the Jazz have done in developing youth
I think that’s a great tribute to our coaching staff. Tyrone Corbin and his staff, with Sidney [Lowe], Jeff [Hornacek], Mike [Sanders], and Brad [Jones] have done an excellent job for us this year.

If you think back three months ago, and a lot of the media, a lot of our f–all of us, were saying, “How are they going to be able to balance these, all of these contracts? The contracts that we have, with the veteran players and also the young guys to be able to give them the adequate amount of playing time?”

And to see, I think, they have done a remarkable job of really giving us that kind of balance…It’s given us that kind of a balance of being able to say, “You know what? We’re in this thing not only to develop on a short-term perspective, but also look at the development that is gonna benefit us in the long term.”

Happy with the path the Jazz are on
I’m very happy with the path we’re on, with how we’re keeping ourselves in a position to continue to grow, to be in a position to be able to take advantage of, with our financial situation, opportunities out in the league.

And a lot of other teams, I don’t think are putting themselves, are not in that kind of position where they have those kind of tools at their disposal because of how they’ve handicapped themselves, maybe financially and also with terms with some of their contracts and some of the players that they have kinda hitched their star to. And I think that bodes very well for us.

On what’s going on in the front office
We’ve got a barrage of some great people over working as we speak literally analyzing everything that’s going on, and we’ve got some great hard-working people, that are some great basketball minds, and it’s fun to just watch them work and analyze things.

**Randy Rigby on a Junior Jazz ticket promo, Unintentional Dirty Quote Machine: I’m gonna come up with something very special for you, Spence, when I see you in that jersey. (1280)